Playwrite: Catharsis to Cathedrals

It is not uncommon for a band’s first album to be straight up impressive. Melbourne’s Playwrite exemplify this truth with their highly emotive debut album Cathedrals. They have managed to channel life and loss into a captivating listening experience.

Lead guitarist, Patrick Holcombe, lost his parents when defending their home in the Black Saturday bush fires. While the songwriting has been greatly influenced by the band dealing with loss and grief, the vocal harmonies soar cathartically above a backdrop of melodic depth and darkness.

Fans of all good things folk/pop and guitars will be at the mercy of this debut album. Over three years in the making Playwrite have transported honesty and emotion on to a musical canvas through sheer team work as we discovered in this interview.

Music is the ultimate therapy… always. It can be a fantastic amplifier of feeling, a pathway transporting the inner stuff out. It can be a soothing counter, a means of balance. It can illuminate the unknown. It is infinite possibility & creation.

Comfortable or uncomfortable in our rehearsal room we are constantly discovering ourselves & each other.

As a band we work so well because… we are stubborn. Stubborn that we won’t give up on the project, that we will persevere through challenges & obstacles, stubborn that we will pursue what we find meaningful & rewarding. And because we love the shit out of each other.

When playing live we are… released, wild, uninhibited, liberated, present, joyous, unified & authentic. Playing live for us is a gift, a unique moment that invites us & our audiences to throw off everyday conceptions & be immersed in something bigger.

For us the most important part about recording the new album was… honouring our journey as a band thus far. This meant expressing these songs that have carried us through the last 4 years in the way we’d always envisaged, to offer them to the community who’ve supported us along this path.

With the release of Cathedrals we hope to… close this chapter in some ways, in order to discover the next evolution of the band. We are excited to walk into the future with open minds about what we will take on next creatively as a band & as a family.